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Rebel Wilson to host Pooch Perfect on Seven

Australian actress and international movie star Rebel Wilson is set to host Seven’s latest foray into competitive reality television.

In 2020, Wilson will host Pooch Perfect – a show which will feature 10 professional dog stylists competing for a $100,000 prize.

Wilson will be seen on Seven next year

Wilson is currently staring in Les Norton on the ABC, and was recently announced as the host of the first Australian Amazon Original series, LOL: Last One Laughing.

It is her history as a former junior dog handler, however, which qualifies her for the role, Seven said.

“Rebel has a fantastic energy, great timing, the sharpest wit, and like many Australians, she loves dogs,” Seven’s director of network programming, Angus Ross, said. “With her passion, humour and insight, she’s a great host for this entertaining and heart-warming series.”

Wilson did note, however, that she’s allergic to dogs.

“My childhood was full of weekend adventures at dog shows all around Australia, and my family had a business selling pet products out of a caravan, such as leads, treats and the best dog-styling equipment available,” Wilson said in a statement.

“This show with Seven is going to be a ton of fun and showcase some amazing dogs and dog lovers.

“Technically, I’m allergic to dogs though. So hopefully they can edit around my sneezing.”

The show is a Seven Studios production.

Seven is currently running another dog-related show, Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly on Tuesday evenings.

Last week, it had an overnight metro audience of 463,000 in the prime-time 7:30pm slot, according to OzTAM’s preliminary figures. This was behind The Block’s 883,000 on Nine, and Australian Survivor’s 804,000 on Ten.

The week prior, it was higher on 519,000 metro viewers, but was still behind The Block’s 852,000, and Australian Survivor’s 793,000.

Seven’s new CEO James Warburton recently told Mumbrella the network relies on “ageing warhorses” for its programming, and needed to reconnect with “heartland Australia” if it wants to be the country’s leading network.

“You don’t flick a switch. You don’t do it in five-minutes flat. We have to invest, and we have to build our schedule. Sunday to Tuesday 7:30pm is our problem, so we have to revitalise the formats that we believe that we should take forward, and we need to get back to being the Seven that we used to be, around creating, executing and launching content that really connects with heartland Australia,” he told Mumbrella after the company’s $444.4m loss for the 2019 financial year was revealed to the ASX.

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